Second Amendment Foundation: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax

This is a discussion on Second Amendment Foundation: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax within the The Second Amendment & Gun Legislation Discussion forums, part of the Related Topics category; This is an extremely well written article (A Law Review Article) de-bunking the myth of "Assault Weapons". It has robust footnotes and can be used ...

Second Amendment Foundation: The Great Assault Weapon Hoax

This is an extremely well written article (A Law Review Article) de-bunking the myth of "Assault Weapons". It has robust footnotes and can be used for educational purposes. His suggested "tactics" are worthy of consideration.

University of Dayton Law Review
Symposium, Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994,
vol. 20, no. 2, 1995: 557.
Posted for Educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please visit the local law library or obtain a back issue.

THE GREAT ASSAULT WEAPON HOAX

Joseph P. Tartaro*

On the morning of September 13, 1994, President William Jefferson Clinton, surrounded by Vice President Gore, members of the Clinton Cabinet, members of both houses of Congress, the mayors of several major cities, and numerous supporters of the legislation among police administrators, signed into law the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Passage of the bill did not come easily. It involved a combination of preventive and punishment initiatives, most of which were contentious to one group or another. Many civil libertarians opposed the classification of some sixty federal crimes as punishable by the death penalty. Fiscal conservatives denounced the proposed expenditure of over $30 billion which was not actually budgeted by the 103d Congress. Even some mayors and local police administrators demanded changes in the bill to permit them to spend money on equipment and training rather than additional patrol officers--one of the main justifications for the bill.

The suggested changes in tactics for 2A supporters:

As long as the debate continues to be evidence against emotion, the pro-gun side can be expected to lose. It is impossible to argue facts while your opponent is arguing emotion. And if the debate is ever going to be won by the pro-gun side, new tactics are needed. Pro-gunners must exploit the emotional side of their argument. They must transform the debate into one in which emotion is pitted against emotion.

The anti-gun crowd have been exploiting victims for years; Sarah Brady is only one of many who have been enrolled by the anti-gunners and exploited to score emotional debating points.

It is time that the pro-gun side identify and counter this strategy by presenting its own victims, or would-be victims. They need to get greater exposure for the people who use firearms of all kinds for self-defense. The other arguments are superfluous and they are harder for the general public, or the media, to understand. But everyone understands and can empathize with the person who used a firearm, especially a semi-automatic military origin gun, to defend against looters during riots, hurricanes and other disasters, or to defend one's home against the sudden, violent and threatening invasion by easily identified "bad guys."[71]

At the same time, there must be a major effort to educate the media and the lawmakers about what these guns they hate are all about. This is especially true with the media because the general public learns from the media.

One of the simplest ways to help others to understand the truth about these controversial firearms is to invite politicians, media reporters and editorial board members to demonstration shoots. They should be taught to fire the guns safely and to learn about the characteristics of as many of the targeted semi-automatics as possible. When feasible and legal, they should also have a demonstration of full auto and selective fire versions of the guns.

"He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was in reality a wolf of the Steppes. He had learned a good deal . . . and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life. The cause of this apparently was that at the bottom of his heart he knew all the time (or thought he knew) that he was in reality not a man, but a wolf of the Steppes."

I agree with this. There are two fronts to this war: the intellectual and the emotional. We can certainly win the intellectual side because we have facts on our side. What we haven't done is delve into the emotional side, but instead, try to combat it with the intellectual. I agree wholeheartedly that you cannot do this. You have to either show how the emotional side is not valid at all (which is nearly impossible to do) or to fight fire with fire.

We cannot stop showing people the truth. What we can do is add that emotional aspect that is missing.

As long as the debate continues to be evidence against emotion, the pro-gun side can be expected to lose. It is impossible to argue facts while your opponent is arguing emotion. And if the debate is ever going to be won by the pro-gun side, new tactics are needed. Pro-gunners must exploit the emotional side of their argument. They must transform the debate into one in which emotion is pitted against emotion.

The anti-gun crowd have been exploiting victims for years; Sarah Brady is only one of many who have been enrolled by the anti-gunners and exploited to score emotional debating points.

It is time that the pro-gun side identify and counter this strategy by presenting its own victims, or would-be victims. They need to get greater exposure for the people who use firearms of all kinds for self-defense. The other arguments are superfluous and they are harder for the general public, or the media, to understand. But everyone understands and can empathize with the person who used a firearm, especially a semi-automatic military origin gun, to defend against looters during riots, hurricanes and other disasters, or to defend one's home against the sudden, violent and threatening invasion by easily identified "bad guys."[71]

At the same time, there must be a major effort to educate the media and the lawmakers about what these guns they hate are all about. This is especially true with the media because the general public learns from the media.

One of the simplest ways to help others to understand the truth about these controversial firearms is to invite politicians, media reporters and editorial board members to demonstration shoots. They should be taught to fire the guns safely and to learn about the characteristics of as many of the targeted semi-automatics as possible. When feasible and legal, they should also have a demonstration of full auto and selective fire versions of the guns.

I've said it all along... The press doesn't report (nationally) self defense uses of firearms of any sort... Those positive stories need to be brought to the attention of everybody. The only way to do this is to pay for the time... because the national media outlets will not air it otherwise. The antis get all the free air time they want... We, heartless gun nuts, have to buy our time.

In my own discussions with people, I have had quite a bit of success putting people, emotionally, into the shoes of the early Americans and getting them to feel the injustice of what was happening to them, and their bravery taking on a professional army to defend their rights as human beings. I sometimes get poetic and sometimes, sometimes stir up feelings of patriotism these folks had forgotten about or didn't know they had.

I think the fact that all this happened a while ago, makes it easier, and safer, for them to react to. When I talk about the injustice of what happens to innocent people at the hands of criminals I swear some weird 'criminal defense mechanism' activates. They talk about "taking the law into your own hands" and nonsense like that. They will often say things like "Well, then I'd just have to let the criminal kill me because I'd rather that then become one of those awful gun nuts." Here is evidence of the memetic nature of their position. I think this is a dead giveaway for how intensely political and ideological their 'thinking' really is: To them, the Revolution was about broader issues of Justice and Politics (and perhaps in some ways it was). The common man's petty concerns with individual life and liberty don't matter in their minds. But as we students of History know, the Revolution was fought not by theoretical men, or philosophers or politicians, it was fought by real men with families, with their own goals and ideas of what they wanted to do with their lives and their land. It is for this reason that the Constitution looks like it does.

I would think that the burden of proof should be on the anti-gun side, not our side. We shouldn't have to find compelling data to maintain our rights. The other side should have to do that as part of making their argument for infringement.

I would think the burden of proof should be on the anti-gun side, not our side. We shouldn't have to find compelling data to maintain our rights. The other side should have to do that as part of making their argument for infringement.

The sad reality is that we live in a culture where there are no absolutes and truth is relative. This is the worldview that more and more people are being shaped by, and while I agree that we shouldn't have to be on the defensive here, I can foresee more people abandoning the principles of the Constitution as they seek to make reality fit their own view rather than subject themselves to reality. That means, if we don't continue to fight, we could eventually lose our rights completely.

We need to keep fighting, and since we are dealing with the equivalent of intellectual children, we need to adjust our tactics, even if that means stooping to their level of fighting emotions.

We cannot stop showing people the truth. What we can do is add that emotional aspect that is missing.

Very well said.

The masses need to become aware of the mother that uses a gun to drive out a burglar from her home and keeps her kids safe. There are hundreds of cases like this that we need to have plastered on the news and papers. That is the challenge.

This subject reminds me of the quote, "Don’t argue with idiots because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." These aren't idiots we're having to deal with, but the unreasonable.

Instead of being afraid of being beat by their experience, perhaps we should seek to gain some experience of our own so we can be on equal footing. Even then, we'll have a leg up on them because we'll have the truth on our side.